Bob Dylan’s song’s manuscript brings USD 2 million at auction

A draft of Bob Dylan’s popular song ‘Like a Rolling stone’ has been sold for a record breaking USD 2 million at an auction.

The working draft of the song in Dylan’s own handwriting went to an unidentified bidder on Tuesday. The selling price, USD 2.045 million, included a buyer’s premium, reported the Guardian.

“The manuscript is the only known surviving draft of the final lyrics for this transformative rock anthem,” the auction house said, adding the bid has created the world record for a popular music manuscript. The draft is written in pencil on four sheets of hotel letterhead stationery with revisions, additions, notes and doodles: a hat, a bird, an animal with antlers.

Dylan, now 73, was 24 when he recorded the song in 1965 about a debutante who becomes a loner when she is cast from upper-class social circles. The auction house described the seller as a longtime fan from California “who met his hero in a non-rock context and bought directly from Dylan”.

He was not identified. John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for ‘A Day in the Life’, the final track on the Beatles’ classic 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, sold for USD 1.2 million in 2010, the record for such a sale at that time.